


All The Things We Never Did Alone

by OwenToDawn



Series: 15 Day Lyric Challenge 2020 [5]
Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Post-Black Eagles Route (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Trauma, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Violent Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:00:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26009923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OwenToDawn/pseuds/OwenToDawn
Summary: If Jeritza is a distorted reflection of Dimitri, Felix is a reflection of him. The reflection of a reflection.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Jeritza von Hrym
Series: 15 Day Lyric Challenge 2020 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1882966
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	All The Things We Never Did Alone

**Author's Note:**

> Today's fic is inspired by the lyric "We will dirty/our hands 'til their clean/and in our bed/we'll watch our heads/explode before we dream" from One by One by Cake Bake Betty. I felt like this song was very Felix and very Jeritza so here we are
> 
> I'm sorry this is so sad. I have happier fics planned I promise. 
> 
> Title from the same song
> 
> Comments are loved

Felix watches Jeritza train in Fhirdiad’s ruined castle training grounds and feels his heart race. The archbishop is dead. The boar is dead. The crest system Sylvain always hated so much will finally be uprooted and destroyed. And here he is, the stalwart shield to Jeritza’s spear, assigned to protect Hubert as he set about getting what had once been Faerghus in order. Sylvain is here too, serving in a capacity Edelgard had requested of Felix only for Felix to laugh in her face for even asking if he would help dismantle the nobility.

He truly didn’t care enough. 

But Sylvain had passion and drive, and he was leagues smarter than Felix would ever be. He sees the way Hubert and Sylvain talk some time, all hushed whispers as they point at one another’s notes. He’s thriving now in a way Felix is sure he never would have if their world had stayed the same. It’s a bright spot in the hellish post-war landscape. If Sylvain is a bright spot, Jeritza is…

He is like a shadow of Dimitri. Or perhaps a distorted reflection of what Dimitri could have been if he’d just admitted the truth - that he was not quite human, not quite monster, something caught in between. Jeritza has never shied away from his nature in all the time Felix has observed him both at a distance and up close, though he has expressed a desire not to hurt anyone in his more lucid moments. Felix isn’t sure, even now, what it is that makes him trust the words when Jeritza says them when he never trusted the words out of Dimitri’s mouth.

Perhaps it is because Jeritza has never denied that there’s something monstrous that lurks in his veins.

Jeritza doesn’t move like Dimitri. He’s graceful, moving through complicated movements with his spear like it’s an extension of his body, fluid the way Felix is with a sword. Dimitri had relied on power and strength. And it had worked too, powering him through swaths of imperial troops until Felix finally put him down on the Tailtean Plains and fulfilled the last part of his duty to the citizens of Faerghus. The differences in their movements does nothing to stop Felix’s ancient memories of watching Dimitri in this same training ground from pushing to the forefront of his mind.

They’re not even built the same. Their hair is a different shade of blonde, and the frames of their shoulders and arms could never be mistaken. And yet Felix feels as though he’s a child watching someone he admires, but reality is the same cracked distortion of his rose-colored memories. The admiration he feels towards Jeritza is the same admiration one feels towards an oncoming storm, not the puppy love of a child for their best friend. Watching Jeritza makes his blood pound the way it had when he’d seen one of those twisting monstrosities of wind in west and central Faerghus.

" _Tornadoes,”_ Ashe had told him as their class had taken shelter in a farmer’s storm shelter. _“They’re fast. They can change direction at any time. It’s not safe to watch them.”_

Jeritza is much the same. Stunning and deadly, entrancing to watch, but with the ever-looming threat that the dangerous beauty could turn on him in a moment and become a very real hazard. But like the child who once loved Dimitri is gone, so too is the child that knew to take shelter when a tornado was in view.

“Are you happy like this? A feral dog forced into guard duty?”

Felix’s question echoes across the training yard and Jeritza comes to a halt midway through a thrust. In the moonlight, Felix watches his muscles tremble from coming to such an abrupt stop before the tension breaks and Jeritza straightens, arms dropping to his sides.

“Better to bloody my hands for a cause than bloody them for selfish pleasure,” Jeritza says. He doesn’t speak loudly, but his deep voice carries easy in the silence of the night. “But no, I am not happy trying to wash my hands of blood spilled for cruelty with blood spilled for purpose.”

“You’re always so honest,” Felix says, stepping into the grounds and closing the space between them with slow but deliberate steps.

Jeritza turns to him, something that could be a smile if he put in more effort tugging at the corners of his lips. “You said you liked that I was honest.”

“Oh? You care about what I like?” Felix asks. He stops in front of Jeritza and without a moment of hesitation, slides a hand up to twist in the sweat-slicked hair, yanking it back and watching as Jeritza tilts his head back with a delighted sigh.

“Will you call out his name when you take me or are we still too different even in this place from your childhood?” Jeritza asks.

Felix snarls and bites at his throat as his other hand tugs the spear from Jeritza’s grip. The threat of violence just makes Jeritza laugh and grab the back of his head, urging him to bite harder just as he always does. Jeritza does not fear his violence. If Jeritza is a distorted reflection of Dimitri, Felix is a reflection of him. The reflection of a reflection. Far enough removed from Dimitri’s violence to feign humanity with better grace, but with the animalistic rage still burning at his insides. Rage put there by Dimitri himself and stoked by Jeritza in his absence.

“You’re nothing like him,” Felix whispers.

“No, I’m nothing like your pet lion,” Jeritza says, voice sighing as Felix splits his skin near the base of his throat. “But I’ll never hurt you.”

And despite everything, despite the blood and filth that stains both their hands from years of war eating at their humanity, Felix knows it’s true. They’ve done this enough times, lost control and scratched and bit and tore at each other as they sought release, that Felix knows Jeritza will never truly hurt him in a way that matters. He has the control of a man who’s never denied the monster inside him.

That was Dimitri’s problem all along wasn’t it? How did one control something they claimed didn’t even exist?

“Fuck…” Felix’s voice shakes and he lets go of Jeritza’s hair, pressing his forehead to his chest as he shakes.

“You do not want to be hurt tonight, do you?” Jeritza asks.

The absurdity of such a question, asked with such care, from someone who donned the moniker of the Death Knight, shakes a laugh from Felix’s chest. It feels hysterical. He can feel tears burning at the corners of his eyes.

“No,” he says.

“And I do not think you wish to hurt me either,” Jeritza says.

Felix doesn’t know how to answer that, so he keeps his mouth shut and stays where he is, unable to pull away.

“You should go,” Jeritza says. “I have nothing to offer you.”

He’s not wrong. After all, what could two men turned into monsters offer each other besides violence?

Felix pulls away. Jeritza wipes away one of his tears away with a thumb, an expression on his face that Felix doesn’t even begin to try to parse out. And maybe there’s still a little bit of a child inside him, because Felix steps away from the storm and retreats to find shelter instead.


End file.
